Conclusions
It is only recently that we have seen attempts to conceptualize health
literacy in the context of medication use by using terms such as
medication literacy. To advance the field of medication literacy, we
advise other groups to adopt the updated nomenclature as per what has
been recently defined by our group [26] as “the degree to which
individuals can obtain, comprehend, communicate, calculate and process
patient-specific information about their medications to make informed
medication and health decisions in order to safely and effectively use
their medications, regardless of the mode by which the content is
delivered (e.g. written, oral, and visual).” While it is true that we
should strive to improve health literacy on a global scale, it does not
matter whether people have high or low levels of health literacy if they
are not provided information that is accessible and easy to understand.
Indeed, there are tens of billions of dollars spent annually on
developing medicines and it is left to the clinician, nurse, pharmacist,
and patient to navigate these winding and inter-connected roads of
health-and medication literacy. The effectiveness and safety of
medicines cannot be maximized unless patients understand their role in
the medicine-taking process. Moving forward, it is crucial that front
end health care workers recognize inter-individual differences in health
literacy, and whenever appropriate, that they address the medication
literacy challenges they may face when dispensing medications or
providing drug information to patients.
There are well-validated tools to assess health literacy in adults, but
there are far fewer tools to assess health literacy in children. For
medication literacy the tools are far less developed, especially so for
the youth. Because pharmacists are an accessible resource for medication
information, their position in the health care continuum allows them to
apply medication literacy tools to ensure proper counseling and the
responsible use of medicines. Clear and easily understood pictograms or
infographics should be included as part of each drug information
leaflet, as these forms of passive information have been shown by
multiple studies to have the potential to improve comprehension and the
patient’s recall of drug-related information. Effective spoken and
written communication of information about medicine to patients is
crucial to the success of treatments, and in this internet age of near
total connectivity, the importance of incorporating active forms of
eHealth communication into health-and-medication literacy will be areas
of future research. With this in mind, we believe that pharmacists are
well situated to ensure that patients understand their medication
regimens correctly, and that they use their medications safely and
effectively through the use of literacy-based communication techniques.
Because medication literacy has the potential to enhance access to
health care services –and especially so for the most vulnerable
populations–we believe this to be an important topic for clinicians,
nurses, pharmacists, and more importantly, for children and families.